Veggie Poll!

I’m playing around with the polling feature for the blog! At the same time I really do want to have a regular Vegetable Therapist feature, so ideas for what you’d like to see covered would be awesome!

Fair Food!

This weekend I went to Eastern States Exposition, better known as The Big E. Like The World’s Fairs of the 19th century, The Big E is designed to showcase the agriculture and products of the New England States.  Those products include food.  Lots and lots of food.

For starters, there’s all of the typical food that you can eat at any county or state fair. Like fried dough:

Wings:

Or GIANT CORN DOGS:

These are the greasy delights that we all enjoy before promptly becoming sick on the Ferris Wheel, and I’ve been known to enjoy them myself.   But the Big E has so much more to offer, and that’s what I’d like to focus on in this post.

For example, one of the things that makes this fair unique is that it’s an exposition not just for a county, not just for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, but for all six New England states!  Each state has a house that acts as an embassy (you are legally in that state while in its building) and showcase of its culinary glories.  You can also usually buy scented candles and other such nonsense, but we all know where my priorities are.

We stopped into the Massachusetts building and started the day with some macaroni and cellar-aged cheese local to the nearby town of Granville.  The cheese was pleasantly sharp and there were just hints of tomato in the mix – this was a far cry from boxed mac ‘n cheese.  I’d have liked to purchase some cheese but didn’t think it would survive being dragged around the fair all day.  No one likes weepy cheese.

Next we went to my favorite building:

This is the Rhode Island building. While I am Massachusetts born and bred, the RI building offers a treat that we cannot compete with:

That, my friends, is a hot bag of clam fritters.  Also known as clam cakes, these little gems are worth the trip in and of themselves.  Conversation actually heard as we stood eating these outside the Rhode Island building:

Little Girl: But mom, why do you want more fritters?

Mom: Well, Isabelle, because that’s why we come here.

Clearly Mom is raising her children right.  Anonymous mother, I salute you!

Lest you think that these are just little balls of corn dough, let me assure you that there are indeed chunks of clam embedded in them:

While I did not indulge in it, Rhode Island is also home to coffee milk, which I believe has it all over chocolate or strawberry.  I believe I am in the minority in this opinion outside of Rhode Island, however.  Three cheers for that tiny state to the south with all of the bizarre regional cuisine!

That was the extent of our state building tour this year.  Two of my fair companions did eventually return to the Maine building for the baked potato, but as I am personally unexcited by that treat I didn’t bother to document it.  Forgive me, Maine.

Instead we headed over to the 4H buildings to look at the adorable and slightly pungent animals.  Check out my Flickr if you enjoy pictures of cows and sheep!  Since I’m focused on the foodstuffs, here, I’d like to draw your attention to the joys of the dairy bar:

This gentleman is a first-time patron of the Dairy Bar, a magical place where you can get a proper New England milkshake made with fresh milk. He’s enjoying the vanilla variety. For those uninterested in clicking my links, the difference between milkshakes in New England and the rest of the world is that here they do not include ice cream. That particular confection is called a frappe. Learn the distinction to avoid disappointment at your local soda parlor or ice cream establishment.

Also next to the Dairy Bar is a work of food art:

The artistry of this piece is jaw-dropping – look at those little cows! Quite a bit of butter goes into this ephemeral masterwork:

After enjoying the agricultural delights of the 4H barn we headed to the midway to play some games.  While my companions excel at games like shooting out the star, skeeball, and plate breaking, my only talent is darts.  I can pop balloons with a dart like nobody’s business.  Sadly this talent doesn’t transfer to the plate breaking  – I can very accurately hit a plate with a baseball, but not with enough force to shatter it.  Perhaps I will train for next year.

In any case, all of that throwing worked up an appetite, so we headed to lunch.  I decided to try a couple of fair treats that I’d never had before.  The first was the fried pickles:

These were great – hot and salty, with a light, crisp breading. The frying seems to draw out some of the vinegar sting from the pickle. Though not, apparently, from the pickle eaters:

Oh, and they were prepared for me by the fine young men of Dr. Vegetable:

The Vegetable Therapist approves!

The rest of my lunch was a food I’ve eaten before, but not at the Big E – pierogies. Western MA has a big Polish population, so I’m not sure if these are a common fair food or specific to the region. I do know that the Bolton fair has spectacular galumpkis. (as a half-Pole it’s my duty to know these things.)

The Big E’s pierogies were tasty but a bit greasy. The aforementioned field expedition to the Main Building brought them to me – an assortment of potato, kielbasa, cheese, and cabbage filled.

I was partial to the cabbage, which had a nice sour flavor to complement the bland dough casing. The kielbasa were pleasantly salty – really just flecks of sausage embedded into potato. Certain table companions were too put off by the grease to truly enjoy them, but I believe that’s the hallmark of good fair food.

We finished off the day with a few more games and the always amazing Circus Museum. Check out the Flickr for lots of pictures of incredibly detailed circus miniatures.

My last food item for the day was a sarsaparilla float. This was some of the best soda I’ve ever had – just enough of that root flavor to be a nice complement for the ice cream – sweet but a little spicy.

All in all it was a grand day at the fair! Good fun, good people, and of course, good food!

Grasshoppers! Cactus! Smut!

When I started this blog last month, I outlined a few of the upcoming adventurous meals and projects that I was planning to try.  On Tuesday, at one local restaurant, I was able to knock several off of that list in one go and have a great meal with friends to boot!
The restaurant, Tu Y Yo, is a Mexican fonda specializing in traditional Mexican family recipes, mostly from Oaxaca, a Mexican state known for its diverse population and a cuisine that fuses pre and post-Columbian methods and ingredients.  My five dining companions and I had come to sample some of the more – to the Northeastern American palate – eclectic offerings on their menu.
We started with what was probably the most adventurous dish for us – the tacos de chapulines.

Chapulines are a favorite snack in the central valleys of Oaxaca.  They are grasshoppers, caught, cleaned, and roasted in spices.  Since they are only available from May to early autumn we were lucky to be able to order them!  The tacos at Tu y Yo came with pasilla (the red sauce) and tomatillo salsa (the green).  I tried my first bite with the pasilla and was overwhelmed with smokiness.  The other sauce was less overpowering, but my overall impression of the tacos was crunch followed by soft, vague nuttiness.  I’d eat the grasshoppers again, but would like to try them on their own, I think, to judge them better.  I was proud of everyone for eating their share, however, especially since two of our party have fairly serious bug phobias.  We congratulated them for facing their fear by eating it.

Our other appetizer was the Crepa de Cuitlacoche en Salsa Poblana:

Let us observe the innards’ startling blackness:

Cuitlacoche, also spelled as huitlacoche, is better known in the US as corn smut.    (The name cuitlacoche may mean “raven’s excrement”  in Nahuatl.  I think I prefer smut.)  It’s a fungus that attacks corn in a similar manner to ergot in wheat.  It is also seriously tasty.  The flavor, appropriately for a fungus, was very similar to the best kind of mushrooms – that meaty funk.  The crepes were served in a lovely green poblano sauce that was mild and salty, with hunks of queso blanco thrown in for good measure.  This was a table favorite.

My own dinner was the really tasty, though not particularly adventurous, Cochinita Pibil, which is sort of a Mexican pulled pork.  I’d wanted the Tortitas de Puerco, which were described as “Pork cakes served in a prehispanic sauce of xoconostle (cactus fruit)” but alas, they were unavailable.

My beverage was some very pretty hibiscus water.

I also ate bits of everyone else’s dinner, which included:

Cactus paddles stuffed with cheese – delicious.  How could it not be?

Frog’s legs – Weirdly chewy, and oddly fishy.

Steak wrapped around cheese – this had the best description on the menu.  Like the cactus paddles, delicious because beef and cheese is pretty predictably delicious.

We also had every dessert on the menu.  I split the Pastel de Nopal, which is cactus cake covered with tequila cream.  It was very much like a dense zucchini bread, studded with nuts.   It was tasty, but not transcendent.    More exciting to me was Cafe de Olla, which is Mexican style coffee.  Brewed with spices and brown sugar, it is nothing like how I enjoy my morning coffee – I like it unsweetened and with cream – but it was a lovely coda to the meal.  And the earthenware cup was so cute!

At the end of the night, I felt like this adventure was a rousing success, not only because we successfully ate bugs and smut, but because it was such a fun, communal event.  It sounds hokey, but the joy really was in sharing the experience with people whose company I enjoy.  To that end, a big thanks to Roel, Garth, Jess, Elise, (who has better pictures than mine on her blog!) and Dan for joining me in this crazy scheme.  Thanks too, to the staff of Tu y Yo, who were very gracious in accomodating a large group of people intent on photographing their food.

I hope that as I set forth on completing some of these other adventures that more of my friends and family will join in!  Project: Durian is looking for takers!

Vegetable Love

My favorite bartender once stated, “There’s a gin drink for everyone.”  Meaning, you might think you hate gin because you had a lousy hotel gin and tonic at your cousin’s wedding.  It tasted like Pine-sol smells, and you therefore declared yourself a gin hater.  But if you had something else, something balanced and lovely and less like industrial solvent, you might turn yourself around on the gin thing.

I feel the same way about vegetables.  All vegetables, but particularly the much-maligned ones, the Brussels sprouts and kale and beets of the world.  I adore these vegetables, and it saddens me to hear how people speak of them.  A dear friend once told me that beets taste like dirt!  Sure, some of these vegetables are a little more challenging, but come on!  Anyone could love a carrot – they’re sweet and crunchy and taste as good raw as they do cooked.  The real work, but the real joy, is in loving mini-cabbages that look like tiny green brains.

The reason, I think, that most people hate these vegetables is the same reason they hate the gin – poor preparation.  After all, most people cook them all pretty much the same way – some variation on boiled or steamed.  While that can be fantastic for a green bean, for the more challenging vegetables this treatment tends to showcase their worst attributes.  Take the Brussels sprout.  Since it is, essentially, a cabbage in miniature, boiling will make it mushy and smelly, overemphasizing the sulfur notes that plague all members of the cruciferous family.

My favorite preparation for sprouts comes from Mark Bittman’s How To Cook Everything Vegetarian. (As an aside, I’m a big fan of this and the original book, How to Cook Everything.  More on that in a future post.)   Basically, you cut the sprouts in half and place them cut side down in a pan of olive oil, then toss in some garlic, salt, and pepper.  After they start to cook, you throw the whole pan in the oven to roast for 20-30 minutes.

The resultant sprouts are crispy on the outside, with creamy, tender middles.  They taste of garlic and their own caramelized sugars, and they are divine.  If this preparation cannot convince you of the goodness of sprouts, you are a hard case indeed.

I plan to continue to highlight my favorite recipes for unpopular vegetables.  If you’d like more specific instructions, let me know – and tell me what you think!  If you have your own favorite recipes, I’d love to hear them as well – just drop a line in the comments.

In Which I Would Write a Lousy Cookbook

Cookbooks are great.  If you want to know precisely how to make, say, a lemon meringue pie, and you are capable of both reading and following directions, a cookbook will help you produce something that is instantly recognizable as lemon meringue pie.  It might not be the most exciting, daring, or even best-tasting lemon meringue pie in the world, but it will definitively be pie.

And yet, slavish devotion to recipes is impractical.  Unless you are the sort of person who plans the menus for all of their meals a week in advance, there are times that you need to make dinner out of whatever happens to be in the house.  Some cooks I know particularly relish these times.  In fact, it’s often why they prefer cooking to baking – they feel like they can be creative, rule-defying.  Cooking is art, they say, while baking is chemistry.  You can really let your imagination go wild with cooking, while baking requires you to follow the rules.

Personally, I love both approaches.  I love following a recipe precisely to make that Italian rum cake that my co-worker hasn’t had in years, and I love making dinner happen out of a couple of chicken breasts and some tomatoes.  There’s just this little problem I have with the latter method.  If I make something that I really like, I can never, ever make it again.

This isn’t because I have some weird rule about never duplicating the same meal twice; it is rather that, as soon as I’m freed from the tyranny of a recipe, I throw everything remotely related to a process right out the window.  I don’t measure at all, I just put liquids and solids into a bowl until they seem to be the right consistency.  Random herbs are grabbed off of the shelf because they fit a theme I’ve decided to play with or perhaps I just haven’t had them in a while.  It’s kitchen chaos.
And that can be too bad, because sometimes a sort of alchemy happens with this non-method, and the ingredients become more than a sum of their parts and become something wonderful.  It’s frustrating to know that you can never have that exact meal again.

At the same time, philosophically speaking, maybe that’s not such a bad thing.  Maybe those off-the-cuff meals represent a moment, captured and transformed into smell and texture and taste.  You can remember, but not recreate them, so you need to savor them while they last.

Barbecue Bliss

This past weekend was a transformative experience, and the transforming agent came in the form of pork.  But perhaps I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.  In a way, this all started last year.

Last fall, my boyfriend told me we’d been invited by a good friend to attend an underground food party – a barbecue party, specifically.  Now, this wasn’t one of those sit-down deals where the hosts essentially create a restaurant in their home or another convenient space, but it had some similarities.  Namely, it was invitation-only, and the chef in question, while amateur, had considerable talent.  In fact, he’d come in second place in a barbecue competition in Virginia.  Our friend was fortunate enough to be the uncle of this young talent, hence the invite.

Here was an amazing opportunity to take part in a subculture that I’d been fascinated by!  Also, an amazing opportunity to eat my favorite food, barbecued spareribs, until I burst!  There was only one small catch – I was away for the entire weekend.

The boyfriend elected, rightfully so, to go anyway.  I was devastated.

When I returned from whatever god-forsaken errand I was on at the time (actually, I think it was a trip to the Finger Lakes for an amazing bachelorette party that I enjoyed very much), I was regaled with tales of the magnificent feast I’d missed.  The ribs were wonderful, of course, but my man could not stop raving about the sides, in particular a vat of butternut squash soup.  I swore that I would not be left out again.

When the time rolled around this year, I was ready.  And, because I am with a thoughtful guy, he asked if I wanted to bring my good friend Nandi along for the ride!  Nandi and I are food dates, so this was a big deal.

When we arrived at the party, a quick peek at the spread verified that we were in for a treat.  There was a pile of ribs higher than any I’d ever seen, cornbread, brisket, and some truly lovely sides, including a beautiful warm salad of white beans topped with roasted tomatoes and onions.  Even the cole slaw was fantastic – light and crunchy with red onions and only the tiniest hint of mayonnaise.

And then there was the pulled pork.

Reader, there are no words.  This pork, which the chef casually mentioned had been smoking since 6pm the previous night, was a dream.  It was tender, and juicy, and just the right amount of fatty.  Sweet, but smoky.  It melted in the mouth.  Barbecue bliss, indeed.

It turned out that the chef and his partner have been perfecting this recipe, and plan to enter it in a barbecue competition happening in Harvard in couple of weeks.  We gushed and let him know that it was outstanding. Were we judging at that moment, he’d have won.
The only sad part of this amazing experience is that all other pulled porks, including Red Bones and Blue Ribbon, now pale in comparison.  I’ll still eat them, but some of the bloom has fallen off the rose.  Oh well.  There’s always next year.

Egg Drinks

There are certain hurdles that one needs to jump if one is going to be serious about drinking vintage cocktails.  Afraid of gin?  You should probably get over that.  Don’t care for the taste of whiskey?  Keep trying.   There are very few classic cocktails with vodka as a traditional base, so it’s important to learn to enjoy more complex flavors.  Luckily, if you’ve got a skilled bartender and the right drink, this is pretty easy to overcome.

Yet another hurdle, however, and one that I think is more mind over matter, is getting comfortable with having raw egg in your drink.  There are many classic cocktails with raw egg or egg white as an important component – the Pisco Sour, Ramos Gin Fizz, and Clover Club are just a few of most famous. Eggs can add a velvety mouthfeel to drinks like a Tom and Jerry, or, in the case of the Ramos Gin Fizz, a sort of airy lightness that can only be achieved by shaking egg whites like there’s no tomorrow.  And yet, largely thanks to our mothers scolding us not to eat raw cookie dough and the rampant fear of salmonella, many of my friends and fellow cocktail aficionados are not at all interested in the fizzes and flips on the cocktail list.

Well my friends, in the past two weeks I’ve had two different raw egg beverages in two different local establishments, and not only have I lived to tell the tale, that tale is that they were delicious.

The first was that Ramos Gin Fizz, over at Deep Ellum, a fine Allston establishment and one of my favorite bars.

The Ramos gin fizz  is made with gin, lemon juice, lime juice, egg white, sugar, cream, orange flower water, and soda water.  Invented by Henry C. Ramos  in 1888 at his bar in New Orleans, the Ramos Gin Fizz is one of  the city’s most famous cocktails, right up there with the Sazerac. Since the idea is to get the egg white as frothy as possible, almost like a meringue, it requires a substantial bit of shaking.   Ramos’ bar actually hired “shaker boys” to help make the drinks during rushes.

At Deep Ellum it came in a tall glass, thickly topped with snowy-white froth.  The taste is like spring – light and floral due to the orange flower water.  The base of the drink is sparkling due to the soda water – it was all in all a fascinating amalgamation of textures and tastes.

Following the success of the fizz, I was ready to try another egg-based cocktail.  The next week I got my opportunity at the Green Street Grill, a great bar in Central Square that does an absolutely killer taco night on Wednesdays (the oxtail was to die for).  Following the tacos I wanted something sweet so I decided to give their New York Flip a try.

Unlike the Ramos Gin Fizz, the New York Flip (like all flips) contains a whole egg.  Rather than lighter than air frothiness, a good flip is creamy, almost thick.  With the tawny port, the cream, and the fresh nutmeg, this drink tasted very much like an adult milkshake – better than dessert!

Both forays into the world of raw egg cocktails were a big success!  As it turns out, eggs are generally quite safe raw – provided they’re clean and fresh.  The shell, after all, is designed to keep nasty things away from the baby chicken, and does a pretty good job of keeping them out of your drink, too!

The Best Cookies Ever

Ok, maybe not literally – it depends on what you’re in the mood for – but I recently discovered some really very seriously good cookies.

Whenever I go to my hairdresser, which is in the South End, I stop at the Formaggio Kitchen as it’s right around the corner.  If you live in Boston and have not been to one of their two locations, go.  In addition to the largest collection of cheese I have ever seen (hence the name!) Formaggio Kitchen carries a fantastic selection of wines, salumi, and gourmet goodies.  The folks there are super helpful, and it’s small and local, both things I like to support when possible in my shopping.

On my most recent visit, in addition to a lovely goat cheese and a sausage I found Lark Fine Foods Salted Rosemary Shortbread. Let me start out by saying that I am a huge fan of shortbread anyway – I like it better than most sweeter cookies.  This shortbread is thin and crisp and wonderfully buttery.  When you then add the salt and rosemary, they pretty much blew me away.  The rosemary seems odd in a dessert, but it gives the cookies a delicate perfume and tiny bit of bitterness that cuts the butter beautifully.  Heavenly.  I can’t wait until my next haircut – the olive wafers sound promising!

I Heart Chicken Livers

Fridays are my night to eat whatever I want.   I’m usually on my own due to my guy’s long-standing commitment, so I feel no qualms about wanting stuff that’s weird or gross.  Some Fridays I just have popcorn for dinner, or a cheese plate.  On others I get together with friends and eat out or make an elaborate meal.  But some nights, like tonight, I make chicken liver.

Oddly, even as that picky kid who wouldn’t even eat cheese on her mac, I have always enjoyed liver.  Our family was large by today’s standards (4 kids) and my mom would cook a lot of turkey.  One of my favorite treats was when she would determine that the turkey liver was done – out of the oven it would come, piping hot, to be divided between my father and I (and later my youngest sister).  Salted, still steaming, it was somehow divine, meaty yet a little sweet and so tender.

Later I discovered magic of chicken livers wrapped in bacon, or as my mother’s very 70′s cookbook called it, rumaki. It may not have been authentically Polynesian, but it was decadently good, improving on the salt by adding crispness and smokiness.

Tonight, however, I made my new favorite recipe for chicken liver – Stolen Garlic Chicken Livers. The recipe is ridiculously easy and sounds like it can’t possibly work, but it does, oh, how it does.  The livers are melty-tender and the sharpness of the garlic cuts their richness beautifully.  I served them with side of tomatoes from my garden tossed with feta cheese, and it was a perfect dinner for one.  What do you like to eat when you’re alone?

East Boston Adventure

I have a great job, for many reasons. The organization I work for is a non-profit, so we’re dedicated to helping people. The folks I work with are generally nice folks. I get 3 weeks of vacation and a free T pass. But by far, my favorite thing about my job is the travel.

I don’t get paid trips to Paris, or even to Peoria.  However, between visiting schools and companies, I get to do a significant amount of travel around the city of Boston.  Not just the popular tourist spots and neighborhoods of my friends, but every part of the city, from Charlestown to Chinatown to Jamaica Plain to Allston.

The best part of new neighborhoods?  Nearly always, it’s the food.  There are all sorts of tiny restaurants and cafes and bodegas and carts that often don’t get covered in the local papers, and that one might never learn about without walking past.  And one of the richest neighborhoods, maybe my favorite for this, is East Boston.

Before this job, I’d never really been to East Boston.  Sure, I’d been to a house party once, and a concert at Suffolk Downs, but those trips were all simply on the T from point A to point B.  There had never been a chance to wander on foot until I had to take my first trip to the Donald McKay School.
Located at Maverick Square, the McKay is right in the middle of what used to be a predominantly Italian neighborhood (most recently), but is now mostly home to folks from Central and South America.  This seems to equate to amazing food.

One of my personal favorite places to visit is La Sultana bakery. (check out the link, other people agree!)  In addition to serving up fine Mexican and Salvadorian street food, this is a magical bakery.  The magic can be summed up in one word – caramelo.  The bakers at this fine establishment seem to work dulce de leche into all sorts of tasty treats, from donuts to churros to flaky pastelitos.  There is no describing the joy of biting into something fried and having delicious caramel ooze out of it – especially when the dough is still hot.

Maverick Square and East Boston have more to offer than just baked goods, of course, but I think I will save for a later post the reasons I feel that they serve the only real burritos (special exception for my beloved Tacos Lupita) or the joys of fried sweet plantains.  For now, f you can make the time to hop on the Blue Line, stop by La Sultana and get something caramelly for me.